In apparent reaction to a lawsuit filed by Gawker and the American Civil Liberties Union, the office of the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, on Monday released a record of a meeting last year between Mr. Christie and Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News Channel.
John Cook, a reporter for Gawker, had filed the suit to inquire into Mr. Ailes’s relationship with Mr. Christie as part of a series of stories about the political engagement of Mr. Ailes and his cable news channel. He asserted in an interview that Mr. Ailes, a former Republican strategist, continued to act in that capacity informally and behind the scenes.
The suit came about after Mr. Christie’s office resisted Mr. Cook’s request for public records of any meetings, phone calls or correspondence between the governor and Mr. Ailes. The governor’s office cited “executive privilege,” which Mr. Cook found to be unusual given that Mr. Ailes is the head of a news channel.
The suit was filed Monday morning. Within hours, Mr. Christie’s office sent Mr. Cook a letter that reaffirmed the “executive privilege” defense, but shared the schedule record of one dinner Mr. Christie and Mr. Ailes had on Sept. 11, 2010.
That dinner had previously been reported by New York magazine, which also reported that Mr. Ailes had, at a later date, encouraged Mr. Christie to run for president.
“It’s a mystery why they would invoke executive privilege to conceal such an innocuous document,” Mr. Cook said Monday. He said that the A.C.L.U. would ask the governor’s office to certify in court that it had no other records of communication between the two men. “If they do, we’ll drop the complaint,” he said.
A representative for the New Jersey chapter of the A.C.L.U. did not respond to a request for comment, nor did a representative for Mr. Ailes.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=584d527cfb240c59b4327af0eb3539d3
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